OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A man fired from an Oklahoma food processing plant beheaded a woman with a knife and was attacking another worker when he was shot and wounded by a company official, police said Friday.

. . .

In a statement, FBI Special Agent in Charge James E. Finch said the motive for the attack has not been determined but that there is no reason to believe there is a threat to anyone else.

A law enforcement official familiar with the investigation told the AP that while there was indication that Nolen was a Muslim convert and was trying to convert others to Islam, there is so far no connection to terrorism and no evidence of any worrisome travel.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said Nolen had a Facebook page that was of potential interest to investigators but that “there doesn’t appear to be any nexus to terrorism right now.” But the official also said investigators were still looking into Nolen’s background.

The Yahoo News story even manages to imply that he may just as easily have been motivated by Christianity—We have no way of knowing! If only there were some kind of social media where people routinely express themselves publicly that we could look to for clues…

Good point, and I’m glad that the New York Times did cover it. But, two further points:

First, they’re not “all over” it until they’ve given it wall-to-wall coverage (many stories and determined attention over an extended period of time) they way the news media (and, ultimately, other media) treated, say, the Matthew Shepard case, or even the way the NYT saw fit to cover, say, the fact that the Augusta National Golf Club was men-only until a few years ago—just story after story after story:https://www.google.com/#q=augusta+national+golf+club+women+site:nytimes.com

Second, like the Yahoo News story above, the Times is awfully squeamish and misleading about reporting the facts when they conflict with “politically correct” prejudices. Both stories manage to insinuate that we have no way of knowing what the killer’s motivation was and that Christianity is as likely as Islam! From the Times story:

“The F.B.I. uncovered evidence that Mr. Nolen, who called himself Jah’Keem Yisrael on social media, had looked at a wide range of religious materials, from the Bible to information related to Al Qaeda.”

They apparently couldn’t be bothered to look at his actual Facebook page, which is rather less ambiguous.

The Times does manage to mention that he “had posted at least one photograph of a beheading on his Facebook page,” but frames it as an utterly inexplicable, not-connected-to-anything-else-in-the-world “some sort of infatuation with beheadings”! The Times also mentions both of those things only after quoting someone saying, “Beyond being fired, we haven’t found another motive.”

Again, the guys whose job is to find and report facts apparently couldn’t be bothered to look at his actual Facebook page, which is rather less ambiguous.